Statement by Bolivia Regarding the Shared Vision for Cooperative Action on Climate Change

(Pablo Solon) A shared vision for long-term cooperative action on climate change is not simply about defining the limit on temperature increases.

A Shared Vision must incorporate a comprehensive and balanced set of goals regarding finance, technology transfer, adaptation, sharing the atmospheric space, climate debt, forced climate migrants, and reestablishing of harmony with Mother Earth.

In order to give back to future generations a world as we have received it, our target should be to stabilize temperature increases to 1 degree Celsius and atmospheric concentrations of gases at 300 ppm, as close as possible to the pre-industrial era.

To move in that direction, developed countries should reduce their emissions domestically, and without the use of market mechanisms. In the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the aggregate target must be a reduction of 50% based on 1990 levels by 2017.

A Shared Vision should include the equitable allocation of atmospheric space among developed countries and developing countries, taking into account an emissions budget for the period from 1750 to 2050.

It should also include provisions for the transfer of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries, including the exclusion of patents on climate-related technologies to favor developing country Parties;

A Shared Vision should clearly underscore the historical responsibility of developed countries and the need for them to recognize their climate debt in relation to the decolonization of the atmospheric space and in response to forced migration due to climate change.

A Shared Vision should include:

quantified changes to the unsustainable patterns of consumption and production by developed countries.

full and effective implementation of the rights of indigenous peoples.

the recognition, promotion and defense of the Rights of Mother Earth.

A Shared Vision should also include stronger provisions for a mechanism to enforce compliance, because most developed countries have not fulfilled their obligations in relation to the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol. In this way, we should promote the discussion of the establishment of an International Court of Climate and Environmental Justice.

A Shared Vision should promote mechanisms for democratic participation, including the possibility of a world plebiscite or referendum on critical climate change issues that involves all the peoples of the world.

1 comment

I would go a transformational step further. We have to build a shared vision of sustainable civilization that takes the sustainability revolution seriously. Part of the shared vision is an agreement on an international monetary system that works that is unlike the present one with its currency manipulation and speculation, floating exchange rates, huge financial imbalances, all based upon the lack of monetary standard.

The new international monetary system is to be based upon a carbon standard which would lead to fixed exchange rates and debit and creditor carbon accounts in the nations’ balance of payments. A UN World Central Bank would be the global monetary authority replacing the G20’s Bank of International Settlements and its very influential Group of 30 central bankers and finance ministers and the IMF and regulating the 75000 transnational organizations as proposed in the Tellus organization’s World Corporations Charter Organization. If the nations are getting to an impasse in Cancun and demonstrate the gross unacceptability of a 4 degrees temperature rise and if another major financial crisis, caused this time both the USA and Europe, is to happen, nations may finally get to understand that basing the international monetary system on a carbon standard creates an institutional means of integrated financing for climate and development, rejuvenates a very poorly working international monetary system and in the progress pushes for UN Reform to harbor this transformed, carbon- based international monetary system.